14th March 2026
Wow – what a turnout. This meeting was better attended than any we have held before. Thank you to everyone for your patience as we signed -n visitors and rearranged the room to add extra chairs.
Today we were treated to a fascinating and humorous talk by Rosemary Hufton (@rosemaryhufton) with an amazing array of bags made from the weird and wonderful.
Rosemary loves to re-use, in very inventive ways, old things. So, she shared stitched bags, woven bags, and heated pressed plastic bags.
Her sample pieces not only covered an array of techniques, but also used an unbelievable variety of old things. Bags were made from reused garments such as jeans, but then got increasingly weird… juice containers, medical fabrics, the insides of computers, home-brew hoses, seat belts, sail fabric, buttons, cut up socks (toes and ankles), the insides of CDs, and huge lorry springs, to name but a few. We were generously allowed to handle all of her examples.
It was a joy to see and really stretched our imaginations. Who knew you could make a bag from just about anything? The message was to go out, try anything and have fun!
Later, the new Committee were introduced, and a vote was taken (and overwhelmingly passed) to change our name from Contemporary Quilts Surrey to Contemporary Textiles Surrey. This reflects the change at national level, with the renamed Contemporary Textiles special interest group of The Quilters’ Guild.
Buffy introduced our next challenge – ‘Evolve’. Further details can be found in the Challenge section of this website.
As ever, there were some lovely Show and Tell pieces by members and a lot of shared information on upcoming exhibitions to enjoy. Some hand stitching – inspired by Rosemary’s talk finished our afternoon.